


Cirrus

by LyricOcean



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Grief/Mourning, Nature, Sacrifice Chloe Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-27 21:04:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10816734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyricOcean/pseuds/LyricOcean
Summary: My (hopefully slightly different) take on the Sacrifice Chloe ending, complete with Chasefield (of course) and pretty nature walks.





	Cirrus

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys I'm back after a crazy month or two, hope you enjoy :)

Behind the school deep into the forest cut a hiking track, curving and swerving uphill, littered with pine tree needles and scuffed dirt. The track was technically closed off, but then again so was the whole school, at least for a few weeks, and it wasn't like anyone cared enough to enforce it. Though only several students had elected to go home instead of staying in their dorm rooms there was a deep and endless quiet that had settled over the school like a blanket. There was an elephant in the room it seemed nobody could bear to address; a hesitation.

A question.

The question that haunted the school, which was neither asked nor answered, was the question that had lured Max out to the woods in the first place. The question was, of course:

“What next?”

She had found herself asking it under her breath like a curse. After Chloe’s funeral it seemed her life had lost direction. The funeral had been something to prepare for. Another hurdle to stumble over, feet bleeding, breathless. She’d chosen the dress. She’d spoken to the press. She’d gone to Chloe’s house and helped her mother sort through her things, or at least some of them. Too early to deal with the rest. After all of that had been done, checked off as if on a shopping list, that was when Max really felt it: the emptiness. The crushing loneliness. Just herself and her thoughts and her eerily quiet bedroom, time inconsequential and tossed out the window. Not showering for days, sometimes not even leaving her room until it was late at night with nobody to see her but herself, pale and small in the bathroom mirrors, broken blood vessels still swimming in her eyes from the first time she’d gone back into a public bathroom and all of a sudden couldn't stop puking. The other girls had tried to talk to her at first but Max was on another planet and they all knew it. Eventually conversation was whittled down to awkward hellos and avoided eye contact. Max didn't mind. She had nothing to say. There was only one person alive she wanted to talk to, but it was rumoured that the girl hadn't said a single word since the shooting.

Sometimes Max wondered if she’d died that day Chloe had, if the bullet had somehow ricocheted and killed her too.

But mostly she just tried, unsuccessfully, to think of absolutely nothing at all.

The day she first found the track had been the day she’d finally dredged up the courage to ask herself that smothering, unthinkable question. What was next? She was more sick of her own head and her own thoughts, repetitive and roundabout, than she could ever verbalise. She felt a sudden wave of claustrophobia, both being in her dorm room and being herself, and before she could really comprehend what she was doing, tentative and scared in a way she couldn't describe, she had stood up and changed clothes -- into real clothes this time, complete with a bra -- and found herself taking a step after a step after another step until by some strange coincidence she’d simply found herself at the old wooden sign. It was cracked and peeled, announcing both the presence of the hiking track and that the track was closed. The first time she hadn't even noticed the second part. The whole thing had felt like a dream.

It became a daily habit, her visits to the track, something to do to mark the day as having meant something. Under the trees the temperature dropped and suddenly, deliciously, there was sound: of birds chirping and insects buzzing, of wind in the trees and of streams gushing down the hill. Nature wasn't quiet. Nature didn't hold its breath for anyone. Life had seemed to be in black and white after the funeral but now suddenly there was colour: greens and browns and yellows and reds and blues, in the sky and in the pines and in her heart. Max had cried the whole way on her first time, vision blurred by tears, stumbling on the roots of the massive pines towering impassively above.

It had taken her an hour and a half to reach the top but when she did, finally, a gazebo was waiting at the hill’s peak. Once white and now covered in dry moss, with built in benches that creaked when you sat on them, overlooking the view of the small town of Arcadia Bay. Population: 452 people. Max had sat there and stared out at Arcadia, at the rows of houses and the pier that caressed the harbour, had looked out at the forest cloaking this side of the town and Blackwell Academy below her, and finally, painfully, at the lighthouse to the far right. She would always think of that as Chloe’s lighthouse. She looked out at all of this and started to sob, not just for the loss of the girl she’d loved so much but for the place she’d saved, Arcadia Bay, in all its imperfect beauty. The 452 people who were all alive because of one unselfish act. An act Max could never, ever explain to anyone. She sat there and she sobbed and sobbed like her heart was shattered into a thousand pieces, but when she looked up to the dawning sunset over the gentle waves, followed the passage of cars smaller than ants as they wound their way down the pathways of the town, Max felt a sensation she thought she’d never feel again: healing.

It was that sensation that kept her coming back, drawn like a moth to a flame, hiking almost every day to that same gazebo. Some days she would reach the top and only stay a few minutes. Often she would stay at least an hour. Some days she would cry. Some days she couldn't breathe. Some days she would draw. Things were never easy.

She never took any pictures. She hadn't taken any pictures since Chloe had died.

Before she knew it, it was two weeks until school started, and then one. She bought a calendar for her wall and tracked the time on that. Time was easier to track when it was right in front of her. She was talking more, opening up more, exploring more. The boy who shot Chloe was going to be trialed in June the next year. Things weren't looking good for him. Max didn't know what to feel at that. The teacher who had been caught drugging and photographing girls at the school was only given ten years in jail. The students were outraged at this, Max among them. She found herself getting hooked into conversations, swept along easily as if down a river. She'd forgotten how natural conversations with other humans could be. She'd forgotten a lot of things.

On the Monday of the last week before school, Max woke up early. She woke up early for two reasons: first, to shower before the other girls took their legendary half hour showers and wasted all the hot water, and second, so she could get to the hiking trail early. The school having finally jumped through all the legal loopholes to still stay as a school, Max knew such long hours spent at the gazebo were soon to be a thing of the past, and she wanted to spend as much time there as possible. The place was the safe haven Max never knew she needed.

However, when she approached the cracked old sign, there was a tall blonde girl leaned against the entrance. The young woman looked jittery and afraid, unsure of herself, uncomfortable. She didn't say anything to Max when Max approached her. Rumours were that she hadn't said anything since the shooting.

“Hey, Victoria,” Max said by way of greeting. Slightly awkwardly.

Victoria just nodded. She looked like hell.

“Are you coming for the walk?”

Another nod.

“Okay.”

The two set off silently, tramping uphill. Listening to the birds. Not quite side by side. It should have been uncomfortable but it wasn't. They walked and walked until they reached the gazebo, stationed stoically at the lookout point Max had come to love so much. They sat down in the gazebo, and Max pulled out her drawing pad, and there was a moment where the two of them just sat as Max drew.

“I'm drawing a butterfly,” Max said after she’d almost finished. Testing the waters. “Chloe always…” the familiar knot in her throat was coming back, and she swallowed hard. “Chloe always reminded me of them. I don't know why.”

Victoria pursed her lips, not with anger or distaste but with an emotion Max couldn't quite pinpoint. Regret?

“Max.” The girl’s voice was hoarse. She talked slowly, as if trying to remember words in a play. “I'm so sorry for what Nathan did. I am so sorry. I didn't know.” She was crying freely now. She looked like a little kid. “I didn't know,” she said again, helplessly.

Max didn't touch her. She was starting to cry too but didn't realise. “You couldn't have done anything. Don't blame yourself. It's not your fault.”

There was a long pause where they both tried to control their emotions. Before the shooting, Nathan and Victoria were like brother and sister, each the shadow of the other, an unbreakable team. Victoria was broken now and anyone could see it.

“Thank you for coming to the funeral,” Max added.

“Of course.” Victoria kept her eyes closed.

“How did you find me here?”

Victoria almost smiled. “Everyone knows. It's where you go during the day. The girls all want to come and look but they're giving you space.”

Max blinked. “That's nice of them.”

“Yes.”

And that was the end of their conversation that day. Victoria left soon after that, an unintelligible mumble that could have been either “thank you” or “I’m sorry” escaping her lips as she retreated into the pines.

Max spent the rest of the day drawing butterflies and staring out at the harbour.

Healing was slow, and it hurt like hell.

But it was happening.


End file.
